Quick service restaurants typically service customers who expect to receive their food quickly, with minimum delay, and with predictable and constant high quality. Moreover, the rate of customer demand can vary widely throughout an operational day, with some periods having an extremely high rate of customer demand. For example, customer demand can be very high at lunch or dinner times or when a large group of customers, such as a tour bus, enters the restaurant. The rate of producing finished, saleable cooked food items, however, is generally fixed and depends on a number of factors: for example, the time required to properly cook a particular food item; the size and number of food cooking devices; the number and efficiency of the kitchen personnel. Consequently, quick service restaurants are frequently faced with a varying rate of customer demand and a limited rate of producing finished, saleable cooked food items where the maximum periodic rate of customer demand can exceed the maximum rate of production.
The difference between the variable customer demand rate and the limited production rate is especially prominent where quick service restaurants provide cooked food items which require processing or assembly after the items have been cooked to produce a finished product for delivery and consumption by a customer. For example, many quick service restaurants provide sandwich-type products that are composed of a bun or other bakery-cooked bread products and a sandwich filling which is cooked at the quick service restaurant, for example, hamburger patties, fish and chicken fillets, which may be breaded, and eggs. Such sandwich-type cooked food items frequently require further processing and assembly after the sandwich fillings have been cooked. The processing and assembly of the sandwich-type products can include transferring the cooked filling to a bun product, and adding condiments such as, for example, cheese, pickles, lettuce, tomatoes, ketchup, mayonnaise or tartar sauce to the bun and filling combination. In addition, the processing and assembly of the sandwich-type products can include toasting the bun or wrapping or packaging the food product. Other cooked food products which require processing and assembly after being cooked include meal-type items. For example, a breakfast meal may be sold as a single product consisting of several individual items such as scrambled eggs, hashbrowns, and sausage. Processing and assembling such a meal-type product involves first cooking the various individual food items and then placing appropriate portions of each item in a suitable container for delivery to customers. Cooked food items requiring further processing and assembly after being cooked thus further complicate the difference between the variable customer demand rate and the limited production rate because the processing and assembly steps can introduce a lag time in the production rate necessary to satisfy demand.
Various attempts have been made to bridge the differences between the varying customer demand rate and the limited production rate. For example, additional personnel and food cooking devices could be utilized to increase the rate of food production by increasing the cooking rate. However, an increased number of cooking devices can cause other problems, including increased space requirements, increased operating expenses, and initial capital requirements.
Alternatively, a number of individual food items could be cooked and assembled in advance of an increase in customer demand, such as, for example, in anticipation of lunch or dinner time. The processed and assembled food items are wrapped or packaged but can be held in advance of a customer order in a heated compartment only for a relatively short predetermined period of time, otherwise food quality and consistency suffers. Thereafter, customer orders can be quickly filled by using the supply of previously assembled cooked food items. However, although pre-processing and pre-assembly of the cooked food items can satisfy a spike increase in the customer demand rate and minimize the difference between such a high rate of customer demand and the fixed cooking rate, pre-processing and pre-assembly can lead to other problems. For example, since the pre-processed and pre-assembled food items can be held for only a relatively short period of time, if the food items are not sold prior to the expiration of that time, the food items must be destroyed, thus leading to an increase in waste and in operating expense for the restaurant. Moreover, in some circumstances preprocessing and pre-assembling the cooked food items can lead to poor consumer perception of the food items even though the food items are properly prepared. For example, if a sandwich-type product requires lettuce in addition to the sandwich filling and bun product, the lettuce may become undesirably warmed and/or wilted after the sandwich has been assembled and is being held in advance of a customer order.
A need therefore exists for a kitchen layout, system, and method of producing cooked food in which food items can be efficiently and effectively cooked at a rate which satisfies a varying rate of customer demand where the rate of customer demand sometimes exceeds the rate of cooking the food items for periods of time, particularly where the cooked food items require further processing after being cooked.